1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a polarization splitter, and more particularly to a polarization splitter of waveguide type having an anisotropic optical waveguide.
2. Prior Art
Lithium niobate LiNbOb.sub.3 is widely used as a material for substrates of waveguide-type optical functional elements, because of its large electro-optical effect and large electromechanical coupling coefficient. An optical waveguide using a substrate made of lithium niobate has anisotropy in the refractive index, and therefore the functional element using it operates in a manner dependent on polarization. Therefore, an element is required for splitting polarized lights (TE and TM lights).
As a conventional polarization splitter, the following are known. FIG. 1 is a plan view of a polarization splitter described in Journal of Lightwave Technology Vol. 7, No. 10, pp 1567-1574, 1989. As shown in the figure, on a Z-cut X axis-propagating lithium niobate substrate 21, there is formed a Y branch optical waveguide which comprises a Ti indiffusion (TI) optical waveguide 22 and a proton exchange (PE) optical waveguide 23. The polarized lights (the TE mode and the TM mode) are excited into respective higher-order modes at a taper region extending in a tapered form and comprised of two kinds of optical waveguides into which the input waveguide is about to be bifurcated. The higher-order modes excited propagate through the optical waveguide with different field distributions due to the difference in the effective refractive indexes thereof sensitive to the optical waveguide. Then, at the bifurcating point, the higher order modes propagate into respective optical waveguides different from each other, since the higher modes of the polarized lights agree with the fundamental modes of same in the optical waveguides, respectively. That is, the TM mode propagates into the branch of the proton exchange optical waveguide 23, and the TE mode into the branch of the titanium indiffusion optical waveguide 22, whereby a polarization splitting operation is achieved.
In the conventional polarization splitter element described above, since the perturbation of the modes is utilized in splitting the polarized lights, there are problems of (a): the polarization-splitting characteristics are degraded for a light with a wide range of wavelength since the polarization-splitting ratio varies with the wavelength of the light, and (b): a fabrication tolerance of the Y branch is close or strict, since the polarization-splitting ratio largely depends on a branching angle of the Y branch.